Current situation: Millions are facing starvation in Africa

The United Nations has reported that starvation threatens more than a million children in Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, and South Sudan. Conditions in other African countries are also worsening – with growing hunger caused by months of drought leaving children amongst the most badly affected.

Additional factors contributing to the wave of hunger in Africa include the ongoing civil war in South Sudan, which has caused explosive inflation. In this country alone, around 100,000 lives are threatened by hunger, while five million people are in urgent need of food supplies (status as of March 2017). A growing number of South Sudanese people are fleeing the country to seek refuge in the neighboring countries, especially in Uganda. Additionally, the most desperate refugees are fleeing from conflict towards the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country which is in itself often in need of humanitarian aid.

Conditions for people in Northern Kenya also continue to worsen. No rain has fallen in parts of the country for months. In this region alone, around 2.7 million people are living in the grip of a punishing drought. The situation in Marsabit is especially dire, and more than half of the county’s children are undernourished. People in the area depend almost exclusively on cattle husbandry, and eighty percent of their livestock is already dead – leaving them with no means to buy food or to feed themselves from their animals.

This is how we help the people in the crisis-ridden regions of Africa: